Death On a Sunday Morning (Detective Johnny Inch series Book 8)

by J F Straker

‘Not entirely. Couldn’t have been, could he? Not after five hours of steady drinking. I’m sure I wasn’t. Not if this morning’s hangover is anything to go by. So I’m not really competent to judge James’s condition, am I? Although as I remember he had no trouble with the car. Drove straight enough. I watched until he turned the corner.’

  ‘Did he have occasion to open the boot?’

  Ayres frowned as he strove to remember. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Yes, he did. He unlocked it to put his briefcase in.’

  ‘Did he lock it again afterwards?’

  ‘No. Well, he wouldn’t, would he? He was going straight home.’

  ‘Which is what he didn’t do,’ Kaufman said. ‘Somewhere along the road he stopped to pick up the girl.’

  ‘That’s true. Have you any clue to her identity?’

  ‘None, I’m afraid.’

  Ayres could neither confirm nor deny Mrs Latimer’s statement that her husband had been in the habit of picking up young girls. James had never mentioned it, nor had he offered anyone a lift on the occasions they had been out together. ‘That’s not to say he didn’t do it when alone, though,’ he added, blowing his nose so vigorously that it seemed to glow when the handkerchief was removed. ‘For company. Someone to talk to. Or talk at, rather. James tended to monopolise a conversation.’

  Kaufman got rid of him then. Though identity had yet to be confirmed to the satisfaction of the coroner, he had no doubt that the dead man was James Latimer. But why had he died, how had his death been engineered? With the Viva parked outside the house for several hours it should have been relatively easy to plant the bomb in Chiswick; anyone who dealt in time bombs was unlikely to be troubled by a locked boot. Yet without foreknowledge of when Latimer would be leaving, how could the bomb have been time-set to explode while he was actually in the car? The inference, then, was that it had been planted while he was on his way home. But where? At that time of night he could have covered the distance from Chiswick to Cuckswell in well under two hours. Why had he taken three? Sex with the girl? Trouble with the car? A kip in a lay-by? An all-night café? The latter seemed the most likely place to have picked up the girl; she wouldn’t have been tramping the roads at that hour of the night. But that still did not explain the bomb. How could the bomber have known he would stop there? How could he have known he would stop anywhere?

  Before reporting to Grover, Kaufman put the problem to Sergeant Pullin. A nice little tangle, he thought, for Pullin to cut his teeth on. But Pullin was as mystified as himself. ‘Sounds like we’re dealing with a maniac, sir,’ he said. ‘Some nut who likes dropping bombs in cars ad lib. Unless Ayres is lying, of course?’

  ‘Lying?’

  ‘Well, he could be, couldn’t he? I mean, if the Latimer marriage was nearer the rocks than Ayres implied…and if he and his wife saw Latimer as a sort of marital tyrant—’ Pullin thought it unnecessary to complete the hypothesis. ‘There’s a motive there, isn’t there?’

  ‘There’s a motive, Alec, but it doesn’t fit the crime.’ Pullin glowed. It was the first time the chief inspector had used his Christian name. Now, he thought happily, I belong. ‘Or the other way round, rather. The crime doesn’t fit the motive. I mean well, a time bomb! That’s gangland stuff, terrorist stuff. It doesn’t go with middle-class domestic squabbles.’ Kaufman shook his head. ‘I don’t see that as the answer. So we’re stuck with the questions. Why, where and by whom? Routine stuff, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Pullin grinned. Kaufman’s tone had been light.

  ‘So try the “where”, Alec. My bet is that Latimer stopped at a café on his way home. It’s the only theory that offers some sort of plausible answer to the girl and that missing hour. It might even account for the bomb if your nutcase is right. So try the all-night cafés between here and Chiswick. There can’t be many, I imagine, it’s a dying profession. Get a copy of Latimer’s photograph from the incident room and flash it around. He must have stopped for quite some time, so the proprietor should remember him. Particularly if he picked up a girl.’

  Moments after Pullin had left, Grover was on the line. ‘Come up, Derek, will you?’ he said. ‘Up’ was literal. Divisional headquarters was situated in an old three-storeyed Victorian building. ‘And make it snappy. I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Kaufman asked.

  ‘Up to here.’

  Kaufman smiled as he visualised Grover’s well-manicured hand slicing dramatically across his throat. He had sounded harassed, but as he turned from studying a wall map at Kaufman’s entry he looked more annoyed than harassed. He pointed to a chair and returned to the map.

  ‘We have another murder,’ he said curtly. ‘And Sunday is supposed to be the day of rest!’

  ‘Murder’s a weekend crime, isn’t it?’ Kaufman said philosophically. ‘Family, anyway. More opportunity. What’s this one?’

  ‘Certainly not family. A woman snatched from her home and later murdered. And it was her husband who found her, poor devil. After a phone call.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Hickworth. At least, that’s where she was snatched. Her body was found there.’ He prodded the map. ‘An unoccupied house near Ryting.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re in a hurry?’

  ‘Yes. The team’s laid on. I’m meeting the Gaffer there. And it’s a hundred to one I’ll have to cancel my date.’

  ‘Promising, was it?’ That explained the annoyance.

  ‘All dates are promising,’ Grover said. ‘Or should be. Otherwise why make them?’

  ‘True. Want me to come along?’

  ‘To Foresters? No. Stay with your bomb. How’s it progressing? The Gaffer will want to know.’

  Kaufman told him. Grover made a few notes, looked out of the window, decided it wasn’t going to rain, and picked up his hat. He was making for the door when he paused.

  ‘Oh! That reminds me, Derek. Castor’s medicine has to be collected from the vet. Caris and Mace, in Duke Street. Can you fix that for me?’

  ‘Of course. But what reminded you?’

  ‘Castor is constipated,’ Grover said. ‘He needs something to get him moving. Like your ruddy bomb.’

  9

  Hands clasping and unclasping, Henry Collier paced restlessly about the room, pausing occasionally to stare out of the windows or to gaze unseeing at a picture as he listened to the faint sounds from above that filtered down to him through the half-open doorway. He had lost count of the number of men who had come. An Inspector Parker had been the first, accompanied by other policemen; the inspector had been sympathetic and had asked only the minimum of questions, and after making a telephone call had gone up to the attic, leaving a constable in the hall. Other cars had come later, an ambulance among them, disbursing men carrying various items of equipment, and later still yet another car with a uniformed driver and men in civilian suits who, to judge from the deference with which the constable in the hall saluted, were obviously highly ranked. None of the later arrivals had bothered him. All had gone directly upstairs, leaving him alone with his grief.

  He had never known such grief, never believed he was capable of it. He had knelt by the bed with his head bowed, her cold hand clasped in his, unable to bring himself to look again at the cruelly distorted face. When at last he had dragged himself to his feet he had stood for a moment with his eyes tightly shut, trying to see her as he had seen her when she had kissed him goodbye the previous afternoon. The image would not come, and he had stumbled from the room and down the stairs and out to the men still waiting in the cars.

  They were shocked when he told them. Or pretended to be shocked. He did not want their sympathy, real or assumed, he wanted them to go. The sight of their faces sickened him. One of them had initiated the events that had led to Gail’s death, and it tortured his whole being that he did not know which. But he would find out. He had to find out. Revenge was all that was left to him.

  ‘I’m ringing the police,’ he had told them brusquely, curbing his hatred. ‘Get ou
t before they come.’

  Only Jock had asked what he intended to do about the money, although the others had looked their interest. Self-control had snapped at the question. He had wanted to smash his fist into their faces, to maim and destroy regardless of innocence or guilt. ‘Get out!’ he had screamed at them, little specks of foam bubbling at the corners of his mouth. ‘Get out, damn you! Get out! Get out! Get out!’

  They had wasted no time in going.

  He had not telephoned the police immediately. Before they came he needed to collect his thoughts, to decide how much of the truth he could safely tell them. He wanted to avenge Gail’s death himself. He wanted to hear her murderer plead for mercy and to ignore the pleading. He wanted to see terror in the man’s eyes as his fingers closed round his throat. He wanted to squeeze the life out of him—slowly, slowly—and to hear the final death rattle as the body went limp in his grip. But for that he needed to be free; he could not hunt the man down and destroy him from a prison cell. So he must say nothing that might lead the police to connect him with the Westonbury bank robbery. Yet also he must conceal nothing, distort nothing, that could be helpful to the police in their investigation. If his own search were to fail, as he knew it might, then theirs must succeed. A life sentence was a poor second best, but it was the only alternative. It would mean prison for himself, for it was inevitable that his own criminal activities would be uncovered at the trial. But he could take that. He could take anything provided Gail’s murderer did not go free.

  Only when his mind was reasonably clear had he dialled 999. Much would have to be played by ear, depending on the police approach. Strange, he thought. Despite his way of life he had never before been personally involved in a police investigation. Now he was both with them and against them.

  He was still pacing the room when he was joined by Inspector Parker, who he learned later was the sub-divisional detective inspector, and the two last arrivals. The elder of the two introduced himself as Detective Superintendent Grover and the other as Detective Constable Achurch. As the superintendent offered his condolences Collier studied him; this, presumably, was the man he had to convince, on whom his continued freedom might depend. A sad-looking man, he thought. Or was sadness a mask donned for the occasion? Smartly, almost foppishly dressed, with highly polished tan shoes and a flower in his button-hole, and a fancy shirt with a high collar and a flaring bow tie. Collier prided himself on his ability to read a man, but he was uncertain about this one. He could be easy or he could be hard.

  At Grover’s request he told what had happened, manipulating the truth to ensure his own security but not, he hoped, to mislead. After an evening in Town he had arrived home shortly after midnight, he said, (two-fifteen on a Sunday morning was late for a devoted husband to return from an evening out, and possibly too late to invent a plausible alibi that could not be checked) and had been pouring himself a night-cap before bed when a man had telephoned to say they had kidnapped his wife. At the man’s suggestion he had checked that his wife was indeed missing, and had inquired what was wanted of him. Money, the man had said, and fast; how much did Collier have in the safe? ‘I told him I didn’t know for sure,’ Collier said, ‘but something in the region of five thousand pounds. He told me to take the money down to the swimming pool, put it on a seat there, and report back to him. Which I did.’

  He paused, seized by a sudden giddiness, and grabbed the back of a nearby chair. Too much whisky on an empty stomach, he thought. Grover said quietly, ‘Why not sit down, Mr Collier?’

  He shook his head, to clear it as well as in refusal. Through the window he saw yet another police car entering the drive, and watched it join the others. Grover too had turned to watch. Collier saw that he was frowning, and wondered why. The car’s only occupants were two uniformed policemen, one of whom was now making for the front porch.

  ‘Was there in fact five thousand pounds in the safe, sir?’ Achurch asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Possibly.’

  A knock on the door caused all three policemen to turn. A uniformed sergeant stood on the threshold. ‘Yes?’ Grover said. ‘What is it?’

  The sergeant took a few paces into the room. ‘A message from headquarters, sir,’ he said. ‘Mr Fox’s car was involved in an accident while he was on his way here. He will be unable to join you.’

  ‘Is he hurt?’ Grover asked.

  ‘A suspected fracture of the humerus, sir. He’s been taken to Melborough General for an X-ray.’

  ‘No other damage?’

  ‘Only to the car, sir. His driver, Constable King, was unhurt. I understand the other car came out of a side turning and hit the near-side front door.’

  Grover nodded. ‘Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll get in touch with headquarters when I’ve finished here.’

  For a few moments after the sergeant had gone the superintendent seemed lost in thought. Achurch took advantage of his silence to say quickly, ‘This money, sir. The five thousand, or whatever you say it was. You handed over the lot?’

  He sounded sceptical. Collier glared at him. He had handed over more than twenty times that amount. But he could not tell them that. One hundred grand was an astronomical sum for an honest citizen to keep at his home. Even five thousand was large.

  ‘I wasn’t counting,’ he said sharply. ‘I love my wife, I didn’t reckon her safety in terms of cash.’ Then, realising the tense was wrong, that Gail belonged to the past and not to the present, his voice faltered as he added, ‘I—I loved her.’

  Achurch looked abashed. Grover frowned. ‘We appreciate that, sir,’ he said. ‘And I presume the five thousand was in the nature of a first instalment. How much more did the kidnapper want?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘Didn’t say?’ Grover looked his astonishment.

  ‘No. Just that I was to await further instructions. So I did. Apart from a quick visit to the pool to see if the money had gone—which it had, of course—I stayed by the telephone, waiting for it to ring. When eventually it did, just before one o’clock, I was told I would find Gail here. He didn’t say that they—that she was dead.’

  ‘Was it the same man on the phone each time?’ Grover asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t recognise the voice?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you describe it?’

  ‘Cultured. Public school type. And—well, he sounded amused. As if it were all a joke, damn him! Christ! Murder—a joke!’ Memory of the kidnapper’s amused cynicism was too much for his self-control. He said fiercely, ‘Why did they have to kill her? Why, dammit? I’d have given everything I possess, mortgaged my whole future, to have her back with me.’

  ‘I know,’ Grover said, and thought how inadequate that sounded as an expression of the sympathy he felt. False, too. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know; he had never been married, never suffered a loss under such tragic circumstances. Along with most police officers he hated this aspect of the job, doubted if he would ever become hardened to it. He had thought himself lucky to escape Mrs Latimer. ‘It seems so—well, so wanton, doesn’t it? Unfortunately it happens far too often. Something scares them and they panic, or they see it as a calculated act of insurance against possible identification later.’ Grover shook his head. ‘I’m wondering, though, if neither reason applies here.’

  ‘Oh?’ Collier’s surprise was genuine. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Well, look at it this way, sir. Why were they satisfied with whatever you happened to have in the safe? As a sort of down payment, an earnest of your willingness to pay, it’s understandable, I suppose. Unusual, certainly in my experience, but understandable. But why didn’t they stress that it was merely a down payment? Why, when they rang again at one o’clock, didn’t they demand more, instead of closing the issue by telling you where to find your wife? True, she was already dead by then; had been dead for several hours, according to the doctor. But you were not to know that.’

  ‘It was Sunday,’ Collier said. He h
ad known from the start that so small a ransom demand would detract from the credibility of his story, that it was the weak link in the chain that held the story together. He had also known that to increase it significantly would weaken another link. ‘How would I get the money?’

  ‘They could have given you twenty-four hours. At least. Even with a massive police search it was unlikely that the body would be found in so short a time. Not without some sort of a lead to the locality.’

  ‘No.’ Collier had shuddered at the reference to Gail as a ‘body’. ‘So why did they kill her?’

  ‘Hate? Revenge? Some sort of personal vendetta?’ Grover scratched his cheek. ‘I could be wrong, of course, but that’s the way it looks to me.’

  ‘You mean they meant to murder her? From the start? Oh, no, Superintendent! That’s impossible.’

  ‘Is it? It explains why they set the ransom at whatever sum you had available. They weren’t interested in money, you see; that was incidental. Or a red herring, more likely. Without some sort of demand for money you would have had no reason to hope for your wife’s eventual release. In which case you would presumably have contacted the police immediately. That might have been awkward for them.’

  Collier shook his head. The superintendent’s supposition was wrong, based on misleading information. Did that matter? Would it encourage the police to look for the kidnappers among Gail’s acquaintances instead of among the criminal fraternity to which, if they were associates of Jock or Bunny or Terry, they almost certainly belonged?

  ‘You’re wrong, Superintendent,’ he said earnestly. ‘You must be. Gail was popular, she hadn’t an enemy in the world. No one who knew her could possibly have planned to kill her. It—it’s unthinkable.’

  Grover shrugged. ‘How about you, sir? Do you have enemies?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware.’ That was true. If he had made no real friends he had also made no enemies. ‘I’m not a popular person, the way Gail was. I know that. I don’t mean I’m unpopular; just that I’m not a good mixer. But enemies? No, definitely not. Not the way you mean. Not the sort who would resort to cold-blooded murder. Besides, in that case, why Gail? Why not me?’